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To begin, the top five things I will remember from this class are the fact that, the media is biased, women are consistently targeted, the media is for the most part, unfair, book banning is not a local incident, and the Rule of Thirds. Clearly, based off my knowledge I just presented, I did accomplish the goal of learning more about multimedia, so yes, I did reach that goal.

My favorite memory has to be my five-minute lip-sync performance of Don’t Fear (The Reaper) by the Blue Oyster Cult. Frankly my greatest memory is in the middle of the guitar solo sliding on the wooden floor knees first (it hurt, but what can you do?). This memory brings such a great impression largely in part due to the fact that I was only one of three-five acts to receive a complete standing ovation.

Sadly, I don’t think I’ve grown as a person. I might’ve become slightly (say 5%) more friendly, but other than that, not much. I guess the one thing I can take away from this is that I’ve become more independent, and consequently, prepared me for college and my career path.

I wouldn’t change anything I’ve done here at HSI aside from being in Generating Art in a Virtual World.

I can’t answer the last question, not because I don’t have anything, it’s largely in part because it’s too long to fit onto a blog without it becoming too lengthy, which in media, can matter. I guess I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the class, and the only thing I have to say is multitasking is real, no matter what the studies say.

To begin, I do not multitask that much during school. Most of the time, I am paying attention in class, or are trying to (tiredness for all intents and purposes can be a factor). Teachers seem to tolerate it, although I’m not entirely sure they are “for” it. Perhaps it’s generation conflict. Makes me wonder if the next generation will be different from ours or nearly the same. When I’m out of school, I can say I multitask. I might be working on an assignment with a video in the background for an example. I’m an excellent multitasker. Perhaps it’s due to being a neuroatypical, but for me, focusing on two or even three things is child’s play. You should’ve seen John when he tried to distract me when I was playing Mario Kart. It took him ten minutes of trying to even mess me up once. If that isn’t a testament, I don’t know what is. The clip really hasn’t changed my opinion on this. As such, I’m going to continue to multitask. The implications of multitasking is for the most part, neutral. While neurotypicals will find it hard to adapt to such a strategy, people like me will find it okay. The real danger though is miscommunication. As we become more and more invested with technology we should as a species try to also take times to talk with people up front. The point of being human is to be invested with other people.

I’ll just say one thing here. I am so glad that this is not true right now, or at least it’s in a diluted form. I don’t believe they are entirely relevant, but you can find them in shows such as Jersey Shore or in a satirical manner on South Park. New media would primarily point towards Vine and Instagram, although these two forms are in a diluted manner. Besides, the mooks and midriffs are for the most part not real, and are just a creation by MTV. In today’s society, we’re beginning to reach a point in which real and fake are colliding, and as such, it is harder to tell what is real and what is not, which in the future, might be a problem. What I do see though, is that MTV won’t last for much longer. Rather than sticking with music like thirteen years ago, they’ve been forced into shows and many other forms of media, and this isn’t working for them. Expect them to go kaput around the same time as Kmart. If they really want to go into a direction that saves them, they need to become more online and go back to their roots. Television might not be the most powerful medium anymore but music sure is gaining in another form.

To be honest, being the antisocial person I am, I don’t believe I’ve been exposed to this as much. However, I’m becoming more and more attached, like a coin as it circles a drain, so not much spoke to me, but it will someday. Messages and info that I remember most is how advertisers are using teens to broadcast their product. This in my opinion is rather interesting. It suggests that in order to be an advertiser, you don’t need to be attached to anyone, you just have to be out there. Nothing surprised me however about this. People give out their identity everyday and “advertise” themselves. As such, it’s ethical, companies are just using the identities of the people in order to sell their product. Nothing strange there. To end this, I did know what selling out was before the video and song video.

As for my entire opinion against the questions, I think that this is the new form of advertising and this is going to last, even if it exists in a new form as technology advances. This is not a fad, and we need to respect it.

Rather than answer the questions directly I’m going to answer it indirectly through a semi-rant. First, let’s consider one big thing. The media. After seeing all these things I’m pretty sure I know how big of an industry the media is. The fact that all this money is made through the presentation of products and beautiful men or women (in reality, women or men photoshopped), shows how much power certain people can have over a populace. No one should have that much power. The whole purpose of a society is to have differences in which these differences can guide us. Taking away these differences eliminates the whole purpose of being human, to make mistakes among other issues. The question of beauty for all intents and purposes can change a society like *snap* that. The other disturbing thing is that men are now being targeted. I’m not sexist, but being targeted over how we as men look is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t understand why this is happening now, whereas it’s easy to understand the female side of the argument, which for all intents an purposes, is much worse for them, being targeted for much longer. Guess our luck finally caught up to us.

To finish this off, I’ll go back to an earlier statement, and leave you some thoughts. It’s not realistic to demand a change for everyone. It’s simply ludicrous. If we take away what makes us who we are, then what are we?

The book And Tango Makes Three is literally a story about a male penguin couple in their attempts to raise a baby chick. Pro-censorship would place the censorship in the realm of promoting homosexual principles, something not meant in a children’s book. Anti-censorship would merely place it in the realm of opening the kids eyes to another type of couple, and showing that it could work out to a point, along with preventing closed-minds.

In my opinion, the ban is entirely unwarranted. Sure, it’s about a gay penguin couple, but is it really all about that? The relationship would signify the teaching of friendship, along with trying new things, however ridiculous (A rock? Really?). Besides, with today’s media, a ban is simply not effective anymore.

Sadly, I’ve never read any of the top ten commonly banned books.

If I were say anything about book banning, it is that it suggests to a public that banning is okay, when it is the complete opposite. While not effective anymore, the act of banning still has a small effect that adds up as more and more become banned. Soon the scale will tip if not kept in check, and it might warrant more extreme forms of banning.

Banning in any case, just cannot be enforced in our time of social media anyways. Hopefully the first amendment will kick into overdrive and this obsolete form of protection will be removed or replaced with something far more moderate, such as banning books in primary schools but not in high schools or public libraries. If you want to ban something, at least make it so you can slowly bring up the children to it. Don’t leave them in the dark completely.